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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020
Submitted to Contest #132
Are you there, God? It’s me. I’d like to know If there’s a prayer For the strong? You see, I’m strong. I know I’m strong Because all day I go from house to house And I sit at tables And people tell me What a wonderful person My husband was And they offer me coffee Good coffee Gourmet The kind you get As part of a subscription service Where every month It’s Peru or Argentina And when you make it The whole house fills up With that potent roasted smell That makes you feel Taken care of These people In these houses They take care of me...
Submitted to Contest #131
We borrowed the car to see a movie with subtitles. It was playing one town over. Something in French. Something with a beautiful man in a top hat singing to a woman. A married woman. A married woman with a gorgeous name who we all wanted to murder because the man in the top hat loved her instead of us. We bought popcorn and smuggled in candy. We filled up a cup with half Coke, half Diet Coke. We pretended we were annoyed when the boys behind us heckled the film, but midway through, it was clear that the movie was terrible and the jokes wer...
Submitted to Contest #130
I liked it better when we were on the bookcase. The titles were all lined up in front of us and we could read them aloud to each other every night. We’d come up with stories and attach them to the titles. The stories would produce other stories with new titles. It became difficult to tell which story sprung from the child of which imagination and how it connected to one of the spines on the shelf. Remember when we lived in that tchotchke shop in the Bahamas? We were just one bottle amongst so many other bottles. The ships were all pain...
Submitted to Contest #129
If you open the door, the snow is six feet high.Seven. Twelve.It’s high enough.Go back in and make some popcorn.Ask the man on the bright red sofa what he’d like.Would he like a drink?Could you make him a drink?He hasn’t spoken in an hour.You were having a perfectly fine conversation and then he just--Stopped.Stopped talking.If you engage him in conversation, he’ll ask you about the scar on your cheek. The scar on your cheek is shaped like the letter ‘S.’ Like a serpent. It’s head poised. It’s body lean. It’s hunger undeniable. It wraps itse...
Submitted to Contest #128
Frankly, Alma, I find the entire affair unacceptable. Yes, please, more tea, but less sugar this time. It’s bad enough I’ve been up half the night. I don’t need to be bouncing off the cheap paneled walls of this ghastly locomotive. I told you we should have looked into an ocean liner for our restive month instead of roughing it aboard the Austrian Line. Now look where we are. Stopped in the middle of who-knows-where while some diminutive detective tries to solve the murder of a man nobody seems to like very much at all. I, for one, belie...
Submitted to Contest #127
There’s a spot of blood on the dog’s right ear. Scout, Sheila’s pride and joy, is so unnerved by her erratic driving that his little body flits about only long enough for her to notice the red dot in her rear view mirror, but not long enough for her to snatch him up and examine where the blood could be coming from or whether or not it belongs to her. Her hand is still bandaged and gripping the steering wheel tightly brings about a slow throb that’s exacerbating her already heavy breathing. She tells herself that if anything happens to her,...
Submitted to Contest #125
Did I make it? Did I-- Oh, sorry. Almost got my tail caught in the door there. You know, it’s a small tail, but it still manages to-- Did I make it in time? I see you’re counting the money in the cash register, but when I checked online it said you close at ten and I believe it’s-- Well, when last I looked at my watch, right as I was entering your fine establishment, I saw that it was sixty seconds until ten and it surely did not take me a minute to enter what I would argue is a rather large doorway, and so I-- Goodness, I ...
Submitted to Contest #124
…And in regards to the sea monster, I would like to congratulate Erasmus on losing but one leg rather than both as he battled the mighty foe. Many a man has lost several appendages fighting such creatures, but Erasmus managed to keep nearly all of us, and for that, we are most proud of him. My, doesn’t his new peg look sharp! Whittled to perfection by Antonio, to whom we are most grateful. Applause all around. Well, that about covers the old business of the day. Dinner tonight will be a light grog with a side of sea monster stew. Perhaps s...
Submitted to Contest #123
“Well, that was dramatic,” his father said. Tuesday’s meant something from the Katherine Hepburn canon, and this time, it was On Golden Pond. When Walter was done with his performance, his father could only muster that one bit of feedback and then he went back to his copy of The Atlantic. His mother sighed and asked him to go get ready for bed. It was past eleven, after all, and he had school the next day. If there was one thing Walter could do, it was memorize things other people had said. Not quotes so much, but dialogue. Movies. Tel...
Submitted to Contest #122
There’s a package outside with my name on it. What would you like me to do? I don’t know what number this is. I just dialed. I dialed until somebody picked up. You picked me. What would you like me to do? Can you help me? I’m sorry, but I’m not used to the phone. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust phones. Communication can be very tricky. I wouldn’t even be calling, but this is an unusual circumstance. The package is just sitting there. Somebody should pick it up. I can’t pick it up. I have been told--taught--told not to pick up str...
Submitted to Contest #121
I don’t know what you expected me to say to her, Jonathan. She is very excited about this new chapter of her life. A divorce is never easy, but a third divorce? Which is to say nothing about all the separations. She and Kasta separated four or five times before they finally made it official, and every time she’d kick him out, along would come a new vocation. Our daughter is a hobbyist who fancies herself a professional--that’s the trouble. It’s gotten so bad I now veer her in the direction of labeling herself an “artist” even though she’...
Submitted to Contest #120
In the other boat, he’d sing the loudest. Shanties and songs his father taught him. Blue-and-green crusted melodies learned in bars and passed on to children late at night with no consideration for school the next day. Iris would watch him get into the other boat despite her protests that the new boat was nicer and safer and could carry him home with certainty. She would watch as her husband of forty-eight years boarded the rain-stained craft--not much more than a dinghy these days--and sailed away singing “Sarah, Sarah, By the Sea” withou...
Submitted to Contest #119
Gregg says you can’t hear anything in a hurricane. That is not true. I can hear anything. I’m like my mother. My mother could hear a mouse dancing on a snowflake in the middle of a symphony. The women in my family have tremendous ears. The men die young, but the women live forever and hear everything. Once, at a New Year’s Eve party, I heard someone disparaging my perm all the way from across the room. This big living room with a hundred people in it, and as everyone was counting down to midnight, all I could hear was Viv Olson saying I ...
Submitted to Contest #118
I became a duckling the day being a swan became too strenuous. Calling out to whichever deity would listen, I begged to have my wings cut or shortened. I wanted the white that had inspired artists to paint me and great beauties to envy me cast off my plumage or given away to someone who could better care for its grace. The others I swam alongside were perplexed at my request. Why wish to return? Why loathe my current form? Why beg to rewind the fable of the swan? Because some of us miss our youth that much, I suppose. Some cannot loo...
Submitted to Contest #117
Ivan was not in attendance at Dalia’s christening, because nobody knew who Ivan was or whether he had been, or if he could be. The beautiful christening dress was too small for Dalia, and that’s just the sort of thing her parents would have blamed on Ivan had Ivan been someone they were familiar with on the day their child was introduced to the Lord. Dalia’s mother, Reina, remembered a disturbance when she was just two months pregnant with what would one day be her golden child. She was fast asleep next to her husband, Vincent, when she ...
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